Empire at Home: Exhibitions, Adventure Stories and Popular Culture

Empire was not only something that happened overseas; it shaped daily life and culture in the imperial countries. Exhibitions such as the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886 and the Paris World's Fair of 1889 displayed products from the colonies and, disturbingly, people from Africa and Asia in staged 'villages', presenting them as curiosities. Advertising for soap, tea and cocoa used imperial imagery, and maps on classroom walls showed colonies in bold colors. Adventure novels by writers such as G. A. Henty and H.

Rider Haggard, whose King Solomon's Mines appeared in 1885, presented empire as heroic, while Rudyard Kipling's stories and poems, including Kim in 1901, reached a huge readership. Historians debate how deeply ordinary people cared about empire: some argue it saturated popular culture, while others note that many working-class Britons were more concerned with local issues. Examining these sources helps explain how empire was made to seem normal.